“Perhaps I could start, sir, by asking when you last saw your wife.”
Harry’s lips were dry. “Yesterday. Yesterday morning.”
The policemen exchanged glances. They had not expected that reply. Macbeth seemed to be breathing harder, although he continued to hold his tongue. His superior kept the next question casual.
“At what time?”
“Shortly after eight in the morning.”
“And where was that?”
“Here, in this flat.”
Skinner scratched his nose, perhaps to conceal his surprise. “She visited you here?”
“Yes. She stayed the night.”
The chief inspector frowned. Sitting opposite, his sergeant’s eyes began to gleam with that brooding hostility which Harry could identify, but not comprehend.
“Am I right in believing,” said Skinner, “that you were separated from your wife, but not divorced?”
Harry nodded.
“An amicable arrangement?” asked the policeman softly.
There was something here which Harry didn’t understand. A secret from which he was excluded. He fumbled for a cigarette and found an old pack of Player’s in his dressing gown pocket. His hands trembled as he lit up. Instinct urged him to choose his words with care. Cautiously, he said, “Is any separation amicable?”
“That’s a lawyer’s reply, if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.” Skinner was curt. “Now - were you still on friendly terms or not?”
“I hadn’t seen her for two years. We weren’t on any terms at all.”
“Yet she called on you,” said Skinner, “and spent a whole night with you.”
“Not with me.”
Skinner’s eyebrows curved like question marks.
“I mean, we didn’t sleep together. She took the bedroom, there’s only one, you can see how tiny this place is. I had the sofa.”
“I see.”
“I doubt it,” said Harry. Anger began to surge inside him, providing an anaesthetic against pain and giving him strength to confront the puzzle. What in God’s name had happened? And what were they withholding from him?
“Tell me, then.”
Harry exhaled and with a jerky movement stubbed out the half-finished cigarette. “Liz was waiting for me the night before last. I arrived back at midnight. She’d talked the porter into letting her in.”
“Why had she come?”
“She’d started an affair with a married man. Unfortunately her other boyfriend found out. That frightened her.”
“Why?”
“The boyfriend is Mick Coghlan. Runs the gym in Brunner Street.” He moistened his lips. “Your people must have a cabinet full of files on him.”
Skinner inclined his head.
He already knows about Coghlan, thought Harry. Christ, what’s going on?
“You’re sure - I mean, you are definite that Liz is dead?” Harry looked quickly from one man to the other. “There hasn’t been - some sort of a mistake?”
He knew the answer before it came. For the first time the sickening realisation hit him that he had been here before. Eighteen years ago, when staying at a friend’s house, the adults had taken him to one side and told him his parents would not be coming home again. Harry had not believed it then, and it had taken weeks - no, months, surely? -for the truth finally to sink in. Trouble was, he had always had a secret faith that a mistake had been made, some bizarre error of identification. Forcing himself to admit that there had been no such mistake had been the hardest lesson of his life. Since then he had blotted out the memory of the breaking of the news. Until now.
His parents had died through the randomness of fate, hit when crossing the road by a fire engine which had burst through red traffic lights. The driver hadn’t been to blame, they had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And afterwards, he had felt lost, for there had been no scapegoat for him to hate, except for the never-to-be-identified hoaxer whose false alarm had sent the engine thundering to disaster that foggy November night, now so long ago.
Skinner’s voice jerked him back to the present. “I’m afraid there’s been no mistake, though I am going to have to ask you to provide formal identification of the body shortly.” Skinner fished inside his jacket and offered him another cigarette. Harry took it with an unsteady hand. “I am sure this must be difficult for you, sir, but would you be good enough to tell me what happened, from when Mrs. Devlin came to see you onwards?”
In a daze, Harry described his discovery of Liz in the flat on Wednesday night. He gave a fragmented account of their conversation and of how he had missed her on the phone during the following day and responded to her written summons by making his fruitless visit to the Ferry Club. He spoke dully; his mind was elsewhere as he tried in vain to reconcile himself to the fact of her death. When he mentioned her fear of Coghlan, he noticed the chief inspector exchange a glance with his sergeant, but the combined effect of hangover and shock made him uncaring about anything other than his loss of Liz. After he had finished talking, he bowed his head, as if to say: What does any of it matter now?
But Skinner wanted more. “This note that she left for you. May I see it?”
Harry tried to recall what he had done with it. “That’s . . . yes, I remember now. I burnt it. In a temper, I admit.”
“Why do that? It seems an extreme reaction.”
“I was angry, that’s all. She was taking it for granted that I would chase after her.”
“Yet that is precisely what you did,” pointed out Skinner. “Very well. Did you go to the Ferry Club right away?”
“Not immediately. I made myself something to eat first, read a little, then went out. I must have left here about twenty to eleven.”
“And did you bump into your wife on the way?”
“Of course not.”
“Talk to anyone whilst you were out?”
Harry hesitated, then told the detective about his conversation with Trisha. Skinner nodded, Macbeth made a note. Yet neither of them seemed interested.
“And you say you left at about twelve?”
“Give or take ten minutes. I can’t be precise. Look, do you mind-”
“You came straight home, you said. Anyone see you arrive back? Or depart?”
“Not as far as I can recall. The porter may have been on his rounds.”
Skinner appeared to reflect on Harry’s answers for a moment or two before saying, “What were your feelings towards your wife, Mr. Devlin?”
Harry scoured his mind for a suitable reply. But how could he give a sensible response to someone who had never met the woman? What were his feelings for Liz: love, hate, devotion, fury? All in equal measure at every hour of the day? He stretched out his arms helplessly.
“You’re speaking in the past tense,” he said at last, “I don’t think I can cope with that at the moment. Any minute now Liz will walk through the door and tell me this is all some gigantic joke. An out-of-season April fool.”
Skinner’s pale pink tongue appeared between narrow lips. “I’m sorry, Mr. Devlin, but I have to ask you this - did you kill your wife?”
Harry lit another cigarette. Although he avoided the detectives’ eyes, the prickling of his skin told him that they were weighing him up like ratcatchers examining their prey.
“Liz tempted me to murder from the hour when I met her, Chief Inspector. She was impatient and impulsive and infuriating. I never came across a woman who could goad me with such ease. I won’t pretend she didn’t sometimes drive me crazy with rage. But I’d sooner lose an arm than cause her a moment’s misery. If you’re scratching round for a culprit, count me out.”
Macbeth said, “Mind if I look round?” After his superior’s low-key questioning, the sound of the black detective’s voice came as a shock. The accent was deepest Kirby, the tone unambiguously insolent. Even before Harry could reply, the young policeman was on his feet, prowling about the room, his whole body taut with expectation. Harry noticed that he touched nothin
g.
“What were you wearing last night?” As an afterthought, Macbeth tossed in a “sir” that added to the insult.
Trying to steady his voice, Harry described his clothes and, turning to Skinner, asked, “Where was she found?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
Unsubtle, thought Harry. “No, Chief Inspector.”
“One of our patrolmen discovered the body on his rounds. In Leeming Street, at the bottom of an alleyway running down by the tyre centre, Albiston’s.”
A mean place for anyone to die. A liver-rotted wino would be ashamed to finish up there. For an instant Harry thought he was going to vomit. Only with a heart-straining effort of will was he able to conquer the feeling of nausea.
“When was she killed?” he asked.
Skinner shook his head. “Too soon for us to say, sir.”
And even if you could, you’d keep that card up your sleeve, thought Harry. He noticed Macbeth push open the bedroom door and step inside, but made no objection. Instead, he pressed for more information and the chief inspector painted in a few background details.
There was, said Skinner sombrely, no indication of a sexual motive for the attack, although pending the post mortem it was too early to draw a firm conclusion. The murder weapon had been a Stanley knife, of the kind sold in hardware shops on every street corner. So far it had not been found. Liz’s handbag had been stolen, but picked up two streets away. No money or credit cards - just the empty wallet - but the driving licence had identified her. Ironic, as she never cared to drive; being chauffeured was much more in her line.
Slowly, Harry said, “Presumably it was some kind of street crime? A mugging gone wrong.”
“We can’t rule out any possibility at this stage.” Skinner’s melancholic face offered no hint as to whether he considered it likely or not. Yet Harry’s years in the law had taught him anything could happen in this city. A kid desperate for money to feed his taste for heroin perhaps, setting on a woman alone, messing up a bag snatch, then grabbing for his knife in a spasm of panic.
“As I mentioned, sir,” continued Skinner, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to accompany my sergeant to the mortuary.”
Before Harry could speak, Macbeth strode out of the bedroom, barely able to contain a savage smirk of triumph. To his superior he said, “A couple of suitcases in there, sir. Also a shopping bag full of women’s things. The luggage is marked with Mrs. Devlin’s name.”
“You failed to tell me about that, Mr. Devlin.”
Harry shrugged. “I forgot, that’s all.”
“Really, sir?” The corners of Skinner’s mouth seemed to turn even further down than before.
It took Harry’s last reserves of self-discipline for him to respond evenly. “Liz dumped them there yesterday when I was out. I think I told you, my neighbour exchanged a word with her in the early evening.”
“If you don’t object, sir, we’ll have to carry out a search of your flat. A routine precaution, I’m sure a man with your background will understand.”
Harry nodded, as for the first time this morning his mind began to work. From the moment they’d learned Liz had spent Wednesday night here, he’d been in the frame. Skinner’s attitude made it clear that his time at the Ferry, his speaking to Trisha, gave him no alibi. Liz must have been killed earlier in the evening. If it was much later, the police wouldn’t have arrived so quickly. And if he objected to their making a full search, a warrant would materialise like an ace from a conjuror’s palm.
“Go ahead, Chief Inspector.” He hoped he sounded more relaxed than he felt.
Skinner nodded and Macbeth walked over to the door. As he got up to leave, Harry had to choke a bitter laugh in his throat as a thought sprang into his mind. Never mind about a mugging - hadn’t Liz in this very room, not forty-eight hours earlier, expressed her dread of meeting her death at Mick Coghlan’s hands? And he had dismissed it as an absurd flight of fancy. Perhaps to be suspected of murder was the start of his punishment for having disbelieved her.
Chapter Six
“Yes, that’s my wife.”
The sweet, sickly stench of the mortuary was everywhere. Instinctively, Harry knew that he would never escape it. No matter if it faded from his nostrils or was cleaned from his clothes. At any moment in the years to come, he would recall this grey morning and again be haunted by the odour of the place of death.
He stood with D.S. Macbeth as the attendant, a silent white-coated man, pulled the sheet up to cover Liz’s face. Seeing her again in this tiled, windowless room seemed unreal. Yet there was no denying that the cold corpse was hers; the last self-deluding prayer, that the police had blundered over identification, had gone unanswered. The dark hair curled as crisply as ever over closed eyes and for all their bluish tinge, the lips had a twist of self-satisfaction. As if to say, “I told you so.” The mortician’s skill almost fooled Harry; it looked as though she were only sleeping. But a second glance at the pale waxy cheeks that he had so often kissed made him realise the spirit had gone. All that was left of Liz on earth was an empty, lifeless shell.
He felt dazed. For a second he thought his legs were going to buckle beneath him, but he summoned up the last of his strength and managed to straighten up. He dare not let himself sink into a quicksand of despair. He must reach for solid ground, try to make sense of the cruel absurdity of what had happened to his wife.
The attendant wheeled her away on a squeaking trolley. Harry did not watch her go. Instead he demanded, “Have you interviewed Coghlan yet?”
His expression unreadable, Macbeth said, “I understand he’s out of town.”
“Liz was terrified of him,” said Harry. He could not help brooding about Wednesday night. “I should have listened instead of thinking it was all an act.”
The policeman said nothing. He led the way into the raw air outside and directed Harry to his unmarked Montego. Macbeth was a good driver, swift and certain, and within ten minutes they were back at Empire Dock. Two squad cars were parked by the entrance and Harry had to walk past the morning porter and relief security guard, who had stared with naked curiosity when he got out of the car, but averted their eyes in embarrassment as he approached, finding themselves unable even to offer a good morning. He could imagine their fascination at the police activity and their ghoulish speculation about whether he was implicated in the death of his wife.
Inside, the police were taking the flat apart. Not a book remained in place, nor probably a speck of dust. The cheese plant had collapsed on to its side and no one had troubled to restore it to the vertical. Strangers tramped backwards and forwards through his home as if on the concourse at Lime Street Station. What were they searching for? Something to pin him to the murder scene, Harry presumed. A photographer was carefully gathering together his gear and an acned constable who seemed anxious to please was flourishing two large polythene bags for Skinner’s inspection. The packages were sealed and bore blue-inked labels stating their contents and the date. Inside were the jacket and trousers Harry had worn the previous night.
In his West Riding monotone, the chief inspector said, “We’ll need to remove one or two personal items for forensic tests, Mr. Devlin. You’ll appreciate, in a case of this kind we have to take a number of routine steps of this sort. I’m afraid I also have to press you for some further information about her background, sir.”
At Skinner’s prompting, Harry sketched a picture of the past. Family details. Liz’s parents had died years ago. Her father was a Pole, who had settled here after the Second World War and found himself an English girl who worked in a bakery in Bootle. There were two children. The older sister, Maggie, nowadays lived in the best part of Blundellsands. Her husband was a partner in the local branch of a country-wide firm of accountants, a dust-dry character with a flair for figures and as much sense of humour as a computer system. Liz had loved to poke fun at him.
Job details. Liz had left school at sixteen, hoping to make it as a model, but her looks weren�
�t fashionable that year. After a few photo sessions with sweet talkers who may not have had film in their cameras, she’d hauled herself off the slippery slope and settled for shop work and finding a man. She’d graduated from one-night-stands with fumbling teenagers and married men whose wives didn’t understand them to an on-off affair with a boutique owner who made her his assistant manageress. But after a couple of years of dithering, he’d decided he preferred the company of his own sex. Yet Liz hadn’t let the experience sour her. She’d taken a job with Matt Barley, and when Harry met her as fireworks lit the sky at Albert Dock, had betrayed no hint of past disappointments, confident as ever that good times were around the corner.
Marriage details. At first, life together had been full of promise. Liz had always wanted to squeeze the maximum pleasure from life, and for a time he could deny her nothing. Not swish clothes, not holidays in the sun, not all night parties, not clubbing it till the early hours. But the time came when a summons to the Bridewell interrupted a romantic dinner that she had slaved over for hours, and when the free flow of money had to slow down. Slowly, slowly, the cracks began to show. He was content simply to be with her, but she had grown frustrated, impatient for something more than he could give. Harry realised she could never change, and for all the rows that had torn them apart, secretly he had never wanted her to.
“Finished in the bedroom, sir.” A uniformed flunkey attracted Skinner’s attention. They conversed in low voices over by the entrance hall, whilst behind them a walkie-talkie crackled.
Harry absorbed the scene. The unhurried comings and goings were grimly compelling to watch as the team of men approached the end of their task. The frustration he had felt when seeing them pore over his clothes and furniture was submerged by curiosity as they made vague efforts to restore a semblance of order in their wake, stuffing books back onto shelves and righting the wretched cheese plant at last. Only doing their job, he told himself, it’s a necessary evil. And yet he already understood that this place - no, more than that, his whole life - would never be the same again.
All the Lonely People Page 5